


Power and Control

by illwynd



Category: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, The Avengers (2012), Thor (Comics), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Brother Feels, Character Death, Dubious Consent, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mind Control, Sibling Incest, The Author Regrets Everything, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-14
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-11 20:14:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/802763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illwynd/pseuds/illwynd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Purple Man, a villain with mind-control powers, takes over the Avengers on his way to taking over the world. When Loki returns from a little vacation in Latveria, though, he goes looking for his brother...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by the Avengers:EMH episode “Emperor Stark,” though the villain's powers have been adapted in a way that was inspired by the short SF story “The Paranoid” in Spider Robinson’s book Callahan’s Lady. And the title of course was stolen from the Marina and the Diamonds song of the same name. 
> 
> Also, I'd like to emphasize that this fic contains graphic mind-control rape and other things of that nature. If that is likely to disturb you, please skip this one.

In the Avengers Tower, there is a man who does not belong there, yet he has made himself quite at home. He walks through the hallways as if he owns them—he might make a case that, as possession is nine tenths of ownership, he may as well—and takes in the sight of his orders being carried out here and there. The worker drones buzz and hum around him but leave him wide berth (as well they should), never looking him in the eye. Here and there others bob more purposefully through the mix, carrying bits of machinery, rolls of wire and boxes of components, things that he doesn’t understand but doesn’t need to. He has Stark for that. The genius in his workshop, slaving away with sweat on his brow and a glint in the back of his eyes, envisioning and rearranging and slotting together the pieces. Every time he goes to check on progress, the man grits his teeth and glares at him but does not stop working. Really, he can’t, and the Purple Man doesn’t mind his animosity at all.

“You’ve always called yourself a philanthropist,” he tells him. “You ought to be glad I’m letting you help me end one of the great wrongs of the world. You and I both know what the appointed leaders really do with the power they’re given. All I’m doing is putting a stop to that.”

In the first few days of his conquest, he had actually let Stark answer, but it had gotten in the way of the work. So now he satisfies himself with a glance at the twitching muscle in Tony’s jaw and a congenial pat on the shoulder. And most days he would leave it at that, but today he calls out to the Tower’s omnipresent AI and has one of the screens display the latest news, the sound carrying over the ticking and whirring of the device that has begun to grow in the corner of the room.

“You can comfort yourself with the idea that you’re not the only one working for me, if you want,” the Purple Man adds as Stark’s jaw twitches more fiercely and as he grips the wrench in his hands until his knuckles go white. In accordance with his orders, the television cameras are following the fight closely, right in the thick of the action so that any reporter with a shred of self-preservation instinct would be long gone. But it’s just too good to miss. Three weeks in, and the powers that be still haven’t learned: tanks and personnel carriers foraying across the bridge only to be met with the troops they’d sent last week, who were now answering to a different command. But more than that, there was lightning, a dense ceiling of clouds, and a figure draped in dramatic red. A speck in the battle but a powerful one, and wherever he goes the fighting is soon ended one way or another.

The Purple Man smirks at the screen. He has control of a whole city full of people, and it will be more whenever the device is complete, and no one will ever again be able to wield their unearned power over him.

Not to mention, he has control of a god. He has to admit he likes that part.

*

Thor feels dread welling up as soon as the combat is over.

He has fought Midgardians before, of course, but never like this. He knows he is on the wrong side of the battle. He sees the terror in the mortals’ faces when he comes before them, shining in the might and glory of the gods, sparks lighting off his hammer as he swings it to cut them down. He knows, he sees, and there is a burning in his eyes like unshed tears, but no matter what he wishes, he cannot stop himself. He has been commanded to fight without holding back—as he had never done on this fragile world before.

He can do no more to stop himself than he would be able to will his heart to stop beating. He knows; over the weeks since this began, he has tried both countless times. It is a compulsion, whether its nature is magical or one of Midgardian technology he does not know and it hardly seems to matter. He has struggled in its grasp and cannot break its fetters, no matter how he tries, and those he swore to protect have suffered at his hand for his failure.

On those orders he came here, on those orders he fought, and now—though he dares not cast a look around himself—from the midst of the smoking wreckage he hurls himself again into the sky and back toward the Tower, as he had been ordered to do when the threat was successfully dispatched.

His eyes water and stream in the wind. They burn with unshed tears, for what is yet to come seems worse than what he has already done this day, though he knows the feeling is unworthy. The purple-skinned villain always pays him special attention in the aftermath of such battles. And that he cannot help but dread.

It would be easier to bear if he could tell himself that by becoming the target of that gaze he keeps it from the others, lessens the torments suffered by his friends. He tried to comfort himself with that thought at first. But now he knows it is not so. There is misery enough to go around, and more to spare.

Misery enough—Thor knows what he will see as he steps through the doors of the Tower, yet he is forever unprepared for it, for it is to step into a realm of horrors subtle and dire. Out on the streets, the people he sees go about their lives, as they have been told to do, with a frightened, empty light in the backs of their eyes, like beasts penned to wait for the slaughter. They keep their heads low; they do not look at him if they can avoid it. They fear to draw his attention, or thereby that of the one who commands him. Within these doors, it is different, and it is _he_ who attempts not to see.

Those who are not useful—or those who roused the Purple Man’s ire—are set to their own tasks, by which the Purple Man _amuses_ himself.

On the first day, when it began, Barton managed to fight back before the commands took hold, the shot nearly succeeding, slicing a red line across the villain’s shoulder. Thor has come across him only a few times since then, huddled over the nested bundle of his jacket, arms crooked, soft and confused cawing noises emerging from his mouth, his face blank of thought. One of those times, he caught Natasha staring their way, her eyes ablaze, red and damp.

But there is nothing he could do to help them. He has been ordered not to interfere with anything he sees. So now he avoids the sight and the sick pain it brings in the pit of his stomach, and with his eyes kept low he mounts the levels to his own quarters, and he wishes, though without much hope, for respite before the night’s torment begins.

And of course, he is not so fortunate, as he had known he would not be. He pushes on his own door and the Purple Man is there already, pawing carelessly through the few interesting trinkets Thor displays on a bookshelf—he opens a little box of wood from Alfheim, inlaid with polished black and white horn, peers within it, closes it with a snap.

The Purple Man has been waiting for him, and Thor dreads what is to come.

*

“Very nicely done,” the Purple Man says as Thor steps inside. “I was watching you today, and that… was very nice. It makes me wonder why you always used to go easy before—it makes such an impressive show when you don’t—but I guess it’s good for me. They still haven’t figured out what they’re up against, have they?”

Thor does not answer. He has learned that a question is not a command to speak, and he is better off if he doesn’t. And he feels better as well. He can imagine that something he could say might matter.

The villain smiles at him then. “In fact, I think I feel like celebrating. I think it’s put me in that sort of mood. So why don’t you put that down, and we’ll both get comfortable.”

Mjolnir dangles from Thor’s hand and he lets it go. The thunk it makes as it touches the floor is solid and final, and without it he feels…

He watches the Purple Man’s face, and there is nothing he can do but wait for the villain to tell him how he will suffer tonight, because the villain is creative. He has come up with so many different ways. Sometimes it is simple—conversations that sound, to the ear, like pleasant ones. He tells Thor his justifications and asks for Thor’s opinion; in mock-solicitousness he coaxes Thor to say how he would revenge himself if he were free to do so. He laughs in Thor’s face at the sound of his empty threats until anger rolls up and down Thor’s body in waves, with no outlet, no way to escape.

Other times, instead, he tests the limits of god-flesh, its capacity for punishment and pain. With knives and worse things, with acids and implements whose purpose he knows not, just things he claims to have found elsewhere in the Tower, and he commands Thor to stay still no matter what is done, and somehow… his body obeys. He commands Thor not to close his lips against his screams, even when he grows hoarse, every breath a rasping pain. In the aftermath of those nights Thor is more grateful than he has ever been for the speed of his healing—for the very sight of his wounded flesh makes him shudder, the horror of it so much greater than any injury he has ever earned in honest battle.

Sometimes, though, the goal is pleasure. Pleasure, and Thor’s humiliation, and the worst of all the lessons Thor has ever been forced to learn on this realm is that even against this, there is nothing he can do.

Thus it is this night. When the order comes, unwilling hands drop to his belt while his cheeks flame and his eyes stare off at a distant corner of the floor,

Quickly, efficiently, he disrobes, his armor going first, the shining scale clinking lightly as he throws it aside. Then boots and tunic. Trousers and underclothes. He peels them all off without pause, because that is what he has been told to do, and he tries not to think of what he is doing. He tries not to be aware of the villain’s prurient gaze, or the way that even now he is murmuring praises for Thor’s performance in the earlier battle.

And then, at a word, at a now-familiar command, Thor is dropping to his knees to allow his mouth to be used. The villain’s hand coils around a hank of his hair, pulling him closer, and his body obeys each detailed command, no matter how loathsome he finds it or how fiercely he wishes not to be doing this.

There is nothing he can do. He cannot fight it and he does not try.

Naked, he kneels and sucks the villain’s cock.

The only mercy for which he is grateful is that, unlike the first few times, the Purple Man has not gathered any others to watch or partake in Thor’s degradation, and thus there is no one else there to see what Thor can be made to do or to see the tears that are rising swiftly in his eyes.

There is only one person he thinks of who could, who might—but no, he dares not even dream of that. No aid is coming. All Thor can do is try to endure.

*

Behind a spell of concealment, wedged into a corner of Thor’s room, Loki watches, and his pulse is thudding harder within his chest with every moment that passes.

For the past month, he had been in Latveria. He had gone there— _not_ fled, he was _not_ fleeing, but simply gone, because he needed to be elsewhere for time. He had been on edge too long, everything he tried to do tainted, his mind circling like crows over the wreckage of his last battle with his brother. He had needed a distraction, and he knew as always that Doom could provide that, so he had gone there, made himself extravagantly comfortable, and he had not allowed a single thought of blonds or hammers or heroes to enter his mind. In fact, he had likely ignored an entire hemisphere of this world.

Loki has a vague memory of Victor’s look of mild perplexity when he had flicked off the American television news with an unnecessary flash of rolling green fire across the screen and an insistence that he simply did not _care,_ that whatever it was could wait for his return.

Today, though, he had returned to this, and he had not at first known what “this” was. Puzzled, he had sensed the strangeness in the air, a subdued mass of silent, quashed panic without a cause. But as he had made his way toward his usual lair, passing near to the center of the city as he went, he had begun to form a suspicion. That suspicion had led him here, and he’d neared the Tower simply _knowing_ that he was right—that the Avengers had gotten themselves into some terrible mess while he’d been away.

He’d smirked at the thought, felt a little regretful that he’d missed part of the fun, felt a little thrill of anticipation as he sneaked inside, toward the level that he knew was Thor’s…

And now, he stands in the corner of Thor’s room behind a spell of concealment, and he has found Thor, who has always been so assured of his own strength and indomitability, who has never bowed to the will of others… like this.

Loki cannot help but stare. The sight lights uneasy sparks within him.

He watches as Thor’s eyes squeeze shut, as a droplet falls to his cheek, as a purple-skinned hand tangles with golden hair. He stares at the fading bruises and scars that mar Thor’s naked back.

He stares at the bruises, at the defeated slump of Thor’s shoulders, at the obedient way his cheeks hollow as he sucks, and the sparks he feels are those of vicarious enjoyment of his long-despised brother’s predicament, amusement at his expense. The golden prince of Asgard being brought low, his armor of arrogance stripped away, his own final powerlessness rubbed in his face.

Loki almost wishes he had been the one to come up with that trick, and, smirking, silent and unseen, he settles in to enjoy the show.

He does wonder, though, with a sort of professional curiosity, exactly how the trick is done. He has already put some of the pieces together, and what he sees now helps to complete the picture. He has figured out by now _what_ the villain’s power does, even if he does not know _how_ it functions.

He takes it in when, a minute later, the villain does not let Thor finish his work but instead orders him onto his feet again and tells him to lean up onto the table on his hands with legs spread wide.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Thor does it, with a helpless, guttering light in the back of his blue eyes. But then he lets his head hang low between his arms, not trying to look to see what is coming. He only tenses slightly but does not move when the villain steps behind him and cups Thor’s ass in one vicious hand.

Somehow, Thor is truly at the mortal villain’s mercy. Somehow, Thor is being controlled such that he cannot disobey any order voiced to him, his body carrying out the commands without his intention, but his mind is still his own. He hates every moment of this, and Loki can see his will to fight grown thin, worn away to almost nothing by the knowledge that there is nothing he can do to save himself, that all his strength has failed him against this foe. Loki can feel his cold despair.

And a horrible, heady thrill drops into Loki’s stomach as he listens for the words that the villain nuzzles against Thor’s ear to deliver.

“I want you to enjoy this,” the villain smiles. And Loki can see Thor’s shoulders sag as he understands what he’s just been told to do.

*

Thor cannot help it, and he hates that there is nothing he can do.

The villain stands behind him, squeezing and rubbing his ass in a proprietary fashion. Thor feels himself being spread, a teasing thumb rubbing against the pucker between his cheeks, and humiliation spreads through him, tight and thick in his chest, yet the unwanted pleasure does as well. With each heartbeat, his cock awakens further, growing heavy between his legs.

His head hangs between his braced arms. He keeps his eyes closed, as if that will protect him, but his body jolts a little as unexpected cold wetness dribbles into the cleft, and it should not be possible but even this ignites his nerves, sending signals of enticing pleasure.

He bites his lip to hold back a moan, and his mind is full, spinning with memories of every other time that the villain has done this to him. Sometimes he is only made to be willing, pliant, submitting to whatever the man desires. Sometimes he is allowed to voice his displeasure, his rage even as he is being abused. Sometimes—

There is a brief slick press of the head of the villain’s prick against Thor’s hole and then all at once he is impaled, and Thor cannot help but give a shout at the spike of pain.

Oh it hurts, the too-sudden invasion, yet the imposed pleasure makes his cock jump all the same, and the combination makes the heat in his face burn brighter. Then the villain takes hold of his hips and begins to thrust into him, and each stroke stirs him, and Thor hates how he cannot stop the way his body responds.

He also despises how the villain seems unable to glory in his victory without _speaking_ , describing all of it in loving detail—what he is doing just at this moment and the far worse things he has done to Thor in the past—so that Thor cannot shut out the sound of his voice as he describes each miserable humiliation.

Only then does it occur to him to wonder whether the command to “enjoy this” was meant to cover not only the physical acts that he is being subjected to but also the steady stream of words being pressed into his ears. And as soon as the thought hits him, he wishes to weep… for he knows the answer, and the enjoyment of each word sinks to the pit of his stomach hot and heavy as burning coals.

*

Where he watches from behind the curtain of magical concealment, Loki is trembling and cannot stop himself.

At first he had felt only amusement and curiosity and that vicarious spark, watching as the villain nudged Thor’s feet farther apart, watching him give Thor a bit of casual, disrespectful preparation, and he had taken note of every little response of Thor’s traitorous body. This was something new indeed—the shiver passing through Thor’s broad back, the shout of pain that faded quickly into a choked whimper, the red flush of shame that appears on his cheek and his head hanging lower as if to hide it.

But before long Loki can no longer deny that what he feels is more than mere detached fascination at the sight of Thor so powerless: no, it excites him to see Thor treated in such lowly fashion, to see him so terribly used.

A particularly vicious thrust shoves Thor’s hips sharply forward, making him cry out, making him clench his hands against the tabletop until his knuckles go white. There is tension in the bare line of his back and in the tremble in his thighs as he fights against the inevitable, and Loki can hear the desperate pleasure in the way Thor moans and whines, pulled back and forth on the villain’s prick, his whole body writhing no matter how he must be trying to stop it.

Loki finds himself unconsciously pressing and rubbing a hand against his own hardness through his clothes as he watches, and he does not think he had ever been as aroused, the unexpected shock sending a shiver rolling up and down his back as if he’d been doused in Thor’s lightning: Thor, naked and subjugated to another’s will, helpless and lost in pleasure, is _glorious_. And Loki wants him more than he has ever wanted anything.

He wants to be the one standing behind Thor, buried deep in his stormy, welcoming heat, and he wants to bend down and lay his cheek against Thor’s back as he fucks him so that he can feel every rumbling groan working its way through him, and he wants to thumb the bruises that the insolent little mortal has dared to lay on his brother’s flesh. Loki can almost feel the tenderness of Thor’s nipples pinched between his fingers, and he imagines that the sounds that fill the air here are made for him, and he imagines slipping a hand between Thor’s legs to weigh the soft sac of his balls and rub at the insistent heat of his twitching cock, promising pleasures that Thor would not be able to accept without deepest shame. He wants to be the one to command Thor to come whether he wishes to or not. He wants to drink down Thor’s humiliation and his pleasure.

Loki again becomes vividly aware of the mortal villain currently fucking his brother with abandon and the litany of crude and creative words that pours from his mouth, and Loki suddenly despises every bloody sinew of his being. Loathes him utterly for what he is doing and what he has done. For what he has _stolen_ that by rights should be Loki’s.

Oblivious, the villain bends, hunching with vile glee to crow over his prize, smile splitting his purple lips. “You do love getting fucked in the ass, don’t you, o mighty Thor? It’s okay, you can be honest.”

Loki watches, breath catching almost painfully, as Thor only manages a weak moan in reply.

*

The villain is by now pounding him hard and steady, pulling Thor back and forth by the hips, slamming up against the backs of his thighs. Thor can feel the slap of the man’s balls against his, and he is by now unable to hold back any of the whimpers and groans that the sensations pull from him, though each one shreds away the last vestiges of his pride.

He is once again glad that at least there is no audience to see him as the pleasure crests and he cries out hard and spills, cock jerking and spurting untouched into the empty air.

The warm drowsiness that follows does nothing to decrease the hold of the villain’s commands over him, but it does grant Thor a few minutes where he cares less what is done to him, only that he is not called upon to shake himself out of his torpor.

He does not even try to fight as a hand shoves down on his back until he is pressed flat to the tabletop, the slick, cold mess of his own spill smearing against his belly, a sensation that should leave him disgusted except that he has felt so much worse. At the moment he barely notices.

Thor’s mind is elsewhere.

He is exhausted. In the past he has fought enemies for months without rest, the hammer heavy in his hand and sleep a distant memory, and still he has never been this weary. For weeks he has fought, struggled, resisted. He had at first felt certain that all he needed was to gather his force of will to break himself free of the compulsion. Then, for a while, he had held out in the belief that help would come. And later, when he abandoned that hope, he had become determined to fight for the sake of fighting, certain that even a futile battle was somehow worthier, nobler, than giving in. But that… in the end that had only made his defeats more painful, his disgraces more sour in his mouth.

He has never been as helpless as this. He has never been as weary. And all he wishes to do—all he can do, perhaps—is to conserve what little strength is left to him. To curl around the core of himself, protecting it, so that if help ever comes he will be there to receive it.

So that is what he does as the last of the sleepy pleasure forced upon him leaches out of the soles of his feet and into the hard floor beneath him. He closes his eyes and tries to drift away.

*

Concealed, Loki is trembling in silent fury, and he can no longer tell when it began, when it changed from what he felt before. All he knows is that it threatens to consume him.

This pathetic mortal villain _dares_ to take what belongs to Loki, to do this to _Loki’s_ —to _Thor_ — 

Releasing a breath, Loki forces his hands to unclench, feeling the stinging indents of his fingernails in his palms, and instead begins to think.

He realizes only then that he has already gone through all the options in the back of his mind before he knew what he meant to do. Before he knew that he planned to do anything.

Loki doesn’t understand how the mortal has Thor under his power, and that makes him nervous. Whatever it is, he is sure he can use his magic to counter it—but, perhaps, not quickly enough. He would have to feel out what he is up against first, and with Thor under the villain’s command… such a confrontation might not go the way Loki wants. It is all risk, too much risk.

On the other hand, he does know that there is nothing special about the Purple Man’s voice in itself. That is not the method by which he wields his power; it is only the medium of the command. Any voice would likely do. It is just that the villain himself is immune to the power he projects. And, somehow, Loki is immune as well. And if that means what he believes it means… well, then there is one good option.

With eyes narrowed, Loki watches as the villain finishes and Thor collapses forward onto his folded arms, unable to collect himself, legs quivering.

And while the villain is sated, lazy and slow in his triumph, Loki creeps out of the corner, still unseen. He creeps right up next to the table, close enough to smell Thor’s sweat and to see the miserable twisting of his brow and the red tinge in the glistening spit on his lip.

He does not touch but leans close, as close as he can get, to whisper in Thor’s ear.

“You will listen only to me from now on, brother,” he says, hoping that he has chosen the right words, the ones that will protect them both. Hoping he has guessed right about the nature of the compulsion to which Thor is subjected. “Forget everything he’s asked of you. Just come with me.”

Thor stiffens. His eyelids jolt open, a flash of electrified blue. Then Loki lets fall the concealment spell, brings his hand up to Thor’s shoulder to steady him. It is odd how quickly relief overtakes Thor’s features in a damp and grateful smile, and Loki would have to examine the way his heart answers if he didn’t have more pressing matters to attend to—not the villain sputtering in shock behind them, in fact, or any rebuke or warning he’d grant him, but only getting them both away from there before anything has a chance to go wrong.  

To that end, Loki casts the concealment back over them both like a blanket, and in an instant they are gone.

*


	2. Chapter 2

It is an hour later, and they are in Loki’s lair, and they have discovered that the Purple Man’s influence extends this far. Thor, however, is in no condition to go any farther, and he sits disconsolate on Loki’s bed, his shoulders hunched over and his brow drawn tight, wearing a fuzzy, mint-green bathrobe that Loki inexplicably scrounged for him out of his closet—a superior replacement to having only the thin, cool material of Loki’s cape wrapped around his nakedness, and it will do until they can find something better.

He hurts all over. He aches from wounds that have not all fully healed but which he can no longer ignore, weary as he is, and he can barely meet his brother’s eyes as Loki hovers over him.

“Why is it that you have never learned that healing is not where my skills lie?” Loki mutters, but of course he does not stop what he is doing.

But even worse than the pain, Thor finds that he wants to be sick, so strong is the disgust and horror that threatens to overwhelm him now that he is out of the villain’s direct control. Now that he is not fighting to hold himself together against the force overpowering his will—all the things that were done to him that he could not stop, could not resist, and how he was not able to make himself disobey even when he would rather have perished—

He breaks into a fresh sweat, skin going hot all over, vision greying until a cool hand begins stroking gently along his backbone, pulling him loose of the clinging horror.

_He could not stop it… he had not been able to resist… no matter what was done…_

“Thor.”

He looks up, blinking, finds that Loki is gazing at him with calm but somehow piercing concern.

Loki has paused in healing him and instead he brings them closer, cups Thor’s face between his hands, strokes Thor’s hair back behind his ears. Loki looks tremendously sad yet at the same time as if he is considering something, and Thor focuses on him with all his might.

“No matter how much I might want to, I won’t tell you to forget, for I know you would not thank me for it later. It might make matters worse, and you will need to remember if we’re to do anything about it,” Loki says. “But what I would like you to do now is this: do not let what has happened trouble you more than you can bear.”

The sound of those words is the greatest relief Thor has ever been granted, for at least half of his distress flushes away as if it were being drained directly from his veins. The taste of bile recedes from the back of his throat. The spinning, blurring panic in his mind slows to the point that he feels he can think again or at least could if he chose.

But he doesn’t want to think yet. So he smiles as best he can, murmurs his gratitude, and tries to calm himself the rest of the way so that Loki can finish his work. He sinks back against a pile of Loki’s pillows, and he breathes another, deeper sigh at the peculiar but welcome sensation of being healed by magic.

He is vaguely aware of how strange it is to be in Loki’s _lair_ , a place that Thor had never set foot in before and had rarely ever imagined, and how strange that he should feel safe there. He is fully aware that the only reason he is not still racked with vilest horror and pain is that Loki is wielding the Purple Man’s control over him for Thor’s own benefit, and that the only reason he is not still stuck in that place is because Loki came to save him, although they have been nothing but fiercest enemies for years now. But for the moment, Thor does not question it. He is simply too relieved.

After a little while longer, Loki rests a hand on his arm and says he’s accomplished all he can, and when he does, Thor tries, briefly, tell Loki how grateful he is for Loki choosing to save him, despite—

He gets but a few words out before Loki’s expression turns strained, his mouth pinching into a pale line.

“You should rest,” Loki says. “Get your strength back.”

Thor wants to say more, but the compulsion is strong enough that Thor finds that he is yawning at the suggestion almost as soon as Loki says it, and he lets Loki pull the soft, thick blankets up over him until he nods _enough_.

Through sinking lashes, he watches as his brother sits at the side of the bed. “There are some things I must do now. If you need anything, call out for me and I will come.”

Yet, tired as he is, Thor shudders. He does not want to be alone. Not now. And he says so, blurting out a plea for Loki to stay with him.

And Loki looks troubled but after only a moment’s hesitation he nods, and with that briefest reassurance Thor slips into a deep, healing sleep.

*

Loki means to sneak away as soon as Thor’s breathing reaches the slow evenness of slumber, yet for some reason he doesn’t. He remains, though he doesn’t let it keep him from more practical matters. The first thing he does is to clean himself up, leaving open the door to the adjoining bathroom while he does it; he had removed the dried blood and filth and other residues from Thor’s scoured skin with magic, but he gets rid of the stains transferred to himself the old-fashioned way, scrubbing his hands first with cool water then with hot, watching the ruddy-brown traces swirl away down the drain.

The next thing he does is try to fill in the blanks, the remaining pieces of the puzzle of what happened while he was gone. For this he watches the television, the volume turned low, wrinkling his nose at the screen as a pair of news anchors fill in any of their viewers—those who may, perhaps, have spent the last month under a very large rock—with a brief montage as the segment begins. Jerky footage of lilac wrists in metal cuffs at the end of an embarrassingly brief scuffle. A profusion of chaotic explosions. A clip showing the Avengers in the middle of a fight suddenly turning away from their target and back toward the city’s more prosaic defenders, turning against them. A split-second view of Mjolnir as it crashed into the broad black-and-white flank of an official vehicle before the frame was whited out by an explosion of lightning, an unleashing of fierce power such as Loki had not seen in years and never in this fragile mortal realm.

At this Loki glances again at his sleeping brother.

Thor should never have gotten himself caught in that despicable trap in the first place, Loki thinks. But he had, and now he believes that Loki rescued him out of kindness, out of lingering sentiment, when really it was only that he disliked the idea of anyone _else_ tormenting Thor in such a way. That was all it was—defending his own territory against unworthy interlopers. Much the same reason why he is now planning to help Thor just enough to safely be able to send him on his way and not have to see again such pathetic gratitude in his eyes as just before Thor fell asleep, trusting Loki to protect him.

And for a long while, longer than he would admit, Loki abandons all practicality, merely staring at Thor as he grunts and turns and whuffles in his sleep, with his gleaming hair splayed across the pillow like threads of living gold.

*

Thor comes to some time later. He is not sure how long, for through his lids he is aware of a thin, cool light that might be the first light of morning or the fading of evening or might be only some oblique light in Loki’s room; he feels he might have slept for a couple of hours or for days and would not know the difference, and for several minutes he only lies there without moving, taking stock of himself.  

He had almost forgotten what it was like not to awaken to torments. Instead what he feels is a quiet lassitude that is not quite wellness. Physically, he is aware of fading traces of injury that make him feel as if he is recovering from long sickness or from great overexertion. His mind, though… it is like walking on thick ice over a great dark ocean, aware of the subtle, creaking rise and fall in every fiber of his being. It is not more than he can bear; his mind is still obeying Loki’s command. But he feels unsteady and unsure, and he is far from fine.

He must give some sign, though, some shudder, for Loki’s voice breaks through into his miserable reverie.

“Feeling better now? Well rested?”

Thor manages to open his crusted-over lids and he manages to shift himself enough to cast his gaze toward the source of the voice. Loki sits in the shadows across from the bed, one arm cast over his drawn-up knee, watching Thor with an intense look.

He tries to answer, but the great dark ocean heaves and he staggers in a roil of shame and terrible relief: Loki had come for him. Loki had found him _while_ the villain was using and debasing his body. And Loki had freed him and brought him here and healed him, efficiently and with subdued care that warmed Thor inside in ways he could not name.

Eventually Thor manages to make himself nod, kept from any words by the swollen thickness in his throat and the stinging in his eyes. But the motion seems to be answer enough for Loki.

“Good. You can stay here until I find a way to deal with this mortal nuisance,” he says. Seeming to think better, though, he adds, “But in this room only. I will bring you food and drink.”

Gratitude swells higher in Thor’s chest, but again he only nods, remembering Loki’s hard look when he had begun to pour out those words before he slept and realizing swiftly the wisdom of not offending the one sheltering him.

Loki slips away then, and this time Thor does not stop him. When Loki returns but minutes later with the promised sustenance, Thor manages (between bites of sandwich) to ask why he had done it.

“Have I no honor among villains either?” Loki answers with a dark laugh. “Is that what you mean?”

While Thor blinks and gropes for a way to reply to that, Loki shakes his head, folding his arms across his chest.

“You should know me better than that,” he says, chiding. “Of course I don’t.” Then Loki adds that he certainly does not mean to have his own plots spoiled by some mutant Midgardian without the sense to stay out of his way.

But Thor thinks he _does_ know Loki better than that. After all their fighting, all their clashes of stubborn ego and pride, Loki had come to rescue him. He remembers the urgency of Loki’s whisper in his ear back in that room as he lay sprawled against the tabletop, and he remembers how Loki took off his own cape to wrap his naked body as they left that place, when Thor was still too much in shock to speak. He remembers Loki guiding him, murmuring quiet reassurance, and he remembers Loki’s worried look as it all crashed down on Thor the moment he had a chance to sit still and let it.

“Brother…” he murmurs—it is the first time in years that the word has not caused him a throb of hidden pain—and he knows that he is near to crying again, the hot sting welling up beneath his lids, but he cannot stop himself.

Loki, however, only snorts and lifts one graceful white hand in a dismissive gesture. “Whatever you are thinking, Thor, you’re mistaken. And there are other things I must learn from you if we are to do anything about this.”

That part, at least, Thor can agree with, and he manages to pull himself together enough to tell Loki what he knows—all the details of how the villain’s power seems to operate, all the things he bragged of while Thor was still under his sway, what little Thor ever knew of the device that Tony Stark was building.

Loki asks him questions, ponders, scrunches his face in scheming concentration, and Thor does his best to keep up; he must, for they again have a common enemy to face.

He finds he feels a little better as the minutes pass.

*

Loki, for one, is not about to rush into things. He needs more information, and Thor... well, he still looks like he could be set to tears by the slightest nudge, and he will need more time to recover enough to be any use at all. So Loki tells him to stay put while he goes to reconnoiter.

The most pressing matter, the question that concerns him most, is the nature of the Purple Man’s power.

Loki has come to believe that it is not based in Midgardian technology—if it were, he would hardly need Stark to design a way to project it farther, would he? Yet Loki is a sorcerer, by far the most powerful sorcerer in this realm, and even when he was in the same room he did not sense anything beyond the vaguest feeling of strangeness prickling at him. That, he thinks, is a mystery, and it is worrisome, and he means to find out the answer before he does anything else. All the other questions—what the limits of this power are, why Loki himself is not affected, how to counter the effect—come back down to that, in the end.

So Loki returns to the Avengers Tower, slips inside unseen.

And when he emerges again an hour later, it is not with a look of great confidence.

“What did you discover?” Thor asks him when he returns, shutting the door with a quiet click behind him.

Loki looks at him, finds him looking less haunted yet more anxious. “Not all that I wanted, but interesting things nonetheless,” Loki says, and then he gets himself settled before he goes on; he takes the chair across from the bed (which, incidentally, Thor seems to have made his own, his legs folded under him and a blanket draped over his shoulders as if he has never been more comfortable anywhere else. It is probably the better arrangement anyway, Loki thinks, under the circumstances.)

“So what would you like to hear first? The good news or the bad?”

Thor blinks at him. “The good, I suppose.”

In response, Loki gives him a sly look and a smile. “They’re looking for you.”

“And that is the good news?” Thor asks, alarmed.

“Well, yes,” Loki answers slowly. “Or at least I’m assuming you’d rather have him spending his time on pointless adventures than in further tormenting your little mortals—I’d say some of them were looking rather hopeful at the idea that you’d gotten away. And he’s even taken Stark off the task of building his device in order to have him try to find a way to locate you. It seems you caught his fancy. That will buy us time.”

Loki cannot help but take a moment to take in the sight of Thor fidgeting and biting at his lip (of course Loki’s lair is well hidden; of course he really has nothing to fear. After a moment Loki sighs and says so.) He waits for Thor’s worried look to abate and then for it to turn mournful as he asks what, then, is the news Loki considers _bad_.

“The bad news… ah,” Loki says, “the bad news is that I still do not understand how it works.”

He tells Thor a little—though not all—of what he saw, what he observed. How, in the whirl of frantic activity geared at finding one escaped god, another had slipped unnoticed among them for long enough that he should have been able to discern anything he needed to know about the cause of the compulsion… yet he had still come away with nothing.

Or almost nothing.

Loki watches Thor’s face as he makes a pointed little hum and draws a fist-sized piece of machinery out of his pocket.

“I’m not sure what this does,” he muses, laying it on the nightstand beneath the lamp so that the intricate web of circuitry can catch the light, “but it appeared to be integral to the device Stark was building. I suspect that I can use it to find out whatever the secret is that has so far evaded me. And if not, it will at least prove troublesome when the device is turned on without it.”

Thor’s look is so incredulous that Loki feels like laughing, and he realizes he had actually forgotten how things used to be between them. He had forgotten how much he used to enjoy this.

*

Thor is resilient. But his body is now used to the coming of torment with nightfall, and he feels it when the sun goes down, casting coppery light across the bare floor.

For the past hour, Loki has been sitting on the other side of the room, taking apart the piece of the device, and Thor has been watching him work from a distance. He remembers well enough how Loki hates to be crowded, particularly when he is only just trying to understand something—how snappish he gets at the very presence of a shadow over his shoulder. So Thor watches from afar as the circuitry takes itself apart, tiny threads of light moving gently in the empty space at Loki’s eye level; Loki pokes and prods and squints at the thing, biting the tip of his tongue, and the pieces sway as if Loki’s huffed sigh has stirred the air to make them dance.

Thor stays silent so as not to bother his brother, and he wraps his arms around his knees to keep himself from shaking.

His mind wanders.

Loki…

A month ago, before the Purple Man appeared, he and Loki had fought. One such fight among dozens… hundreds. Enough that though Thor would once have thought he could never forget such a terrible thing as having to fight his brother, the incidents had begun to blur together in his mind.

But that time was different. It was not like their other battles—so _much_ unlike all their battles before that the Avengers had been able to see it was best not to attempt to intervene, and had let them fight it out.

They had fought…

Yet now he is here, in Loki’s lair, and he and his brother are again on the same side. Even now Loki is searching for a way to put a stop to the mortal villain. Loki saved him.

The thought steadies Thor a little, and he sits with his back to the wall and lets his mind wander, staring off into space. After a while a drowse creeps over him, a heavy blur, and he is barely aware of Loki coaxing him to stretch out so that he doesn’t wake up cramped and sore. Barely aware of Loki tucking the blankets around him again. Barely aware of the hand brushing back his hair, hesitating, and completing the action.

When he wakes in the morning, he expects to find himself alone. But instead, when he lifts his head, he sees his brother asleep in the chair, long legs kicked out in front of him and head lolling to one side, arms folded across his waist.

It cannot be comfortable, and he says nothing about it when Loki wakes a few minutes later, rolling his shoulders back and forth a few times and stretching with a yawn. But Thor knows. The only reason for Loki to have stayed is because Thor so feared to be alone the night before.

The great bitter chasm that has been so long between them now seems like no distance at all, as if he has only to reach across it to hold his brother once again.

*

And all that day as Loki works on the stubborn problem that still escapes him, he cannot help but notice how quiet Thor has become. Once, Thor would have badgered him with endless queries, grown bored and tried to draw Loki into conversation... something. He would never have simply sat in pensive silence for hours on end, as if waiting for Loki to speak first to make it all right.

Under the circumstances, though, Loki is not sure whether this change is good. He is not sure whether it means that Thor has gained some sense of patience and awareness or if he is merely now too traumatized by what happened to dare open his mouth. He catches himself watching Thor in the corner of his vision, sometimes glancing over to make sure that he is still well...

Loki grits his teeth. He does not _care_ whether Thor is well. Of course he isn’t. But Thor is Thor, and by the time Loki has found his answers Thor will be back at strength and undaunted and he will again be useful for the plan that Loki has begun to formulate, and this—this is a simple calculation. A few days of rather enjoyable scheming, the sacrifice of his comfortable bed for a few nights, and then they can all go back to the way things were.  That is all it is.

Loki focuses on the task at hand and ignores the slithering cold writhing in his belly, the glistening helplessness in Thor’s downcast eyes, the itch in him that wants to do something, anything, to make it stop.

It is not until after he has given up on making any further progress for the night and after he has fetched supper for them both that the thunderer surprises him by breaking his silence at last.

“Will you show me what you’ve found so far?” Thor asks, hesitant, after a few bites of pizza. “I did not wish to interrupt you... but if you are done with it for the day, I would be curious to see.”

With a raised eyebrow and a shrug, Loki agrees to oblige him. And that is how, somehow, they wind up poking through the disassembled part together and finding more of worth than Loki had the whole day. (In a quiet voice, as if afraid of offending him, Thor explains that Iron Man had made sure he understood at least the rudiments of Midgardian technology, and Loki thinks—though he does not say so out loud—that Stark’s concept of what is rudimentary is somewhat out of whack with the rest of his realm.)

They sit shoulder to shoulder for hours as they work. Sometimes Thor looks at him with an expectant grin, and Loki returns it, sometimes, without noticing.  

Loki sleeps in the chair again that night while Thor again takes the bed, his arm curled tight around one of Loki’s many pillows. Sometimes Thor murmurs in his sleep. But Loki is not awake to mind.

*

_Thor is watching. He is watching it all happen again. He is watching as for the first time he is commanded by a will not his own._

_Thor is not within his body._

_Thor is trapped within his mind._

_Thor is watching as lilac fingers curl and pinch around the little plastic pieces of Barton’s hearing aids. Watching as his own hand holds his struggling friend still to receive them._

_Thor is watching as his stride carries him down another hallway, past a waft of sweet-smelling smoke in which Banner sits, smiling and cross-legged and barefoot, as content and untroubled as Thor has ever seen him._

_Thor is watching himself as he crouches on the floor, his body pale and vulnerably bare, his face unseen behind blond strands._

_Thor is watching himself scream._

*

Loki is awake in an instant at the sound, on his feet before he knows.

It takes all his weight to pin Thor as he thrashes, all his strength to try to keep him still so that he doesn’t lay waste to anything more important than the bedframe, and even shouting at him doesn’t quickly bring him around.

His eyes at last open—dazed, hollow, unseeing.

Loki hushes him, whispers reassurance until he seems to see again.

Thor reaches for him, pulls him close, shoves his face against Loki’s shoulder as he breathes in harsh gasps, dry sobs that feel hot through the fabric of Loki’s sleeve. Thor clings tightly and does not let go.

Loki is tired enough that he lets him.

At least like this he gets his bed back. More or less.

*


	3. Chapter 3

Loki is less pleased about it when he wakes still hugged tight against his brother like a ragdoll. Thor’s body heat has made him sweat, and they are stuck together beneath the blanket so that Loki grimaces as he extricates himself and rolls away, only to be slapped with the cold of the morning air when he does so.

Thor, predictably, snoozes on, and Loki embraces having the time to himself.

Thor at last stirs some time after midday, and he still looks ragged. He shoves himself up from the pillow with a face like a disaster, and his hair is such a bedraggled mess, tangled on his shoulders and sticking out in all directions, that Loki nearly has an urge to take a brush to it himself.

Instead Loki directs his attention to the mug of still-warm coffee on the nightstand, because Loki has had a breakthrough. He doesn’t bother to explain in detail—it is neither one thing nor the other, after all, not quite Midgard technology and not quite magic, perhaps something entirely new, and Loki (while fascinated) is only half sure he knows how to combat it—because it matters more that they now begin planning the Purple Man’s defeat.

It must be done in a certain way. If it were something to be done from the shadows, Loki would have done it when he had ventured back—could surely have slit the Purple Man’s throat in an instant had he not wanted to find the answers to his questions first. They could just as easily return and do the same now. But they won’t, because what they will do is better.

Loki offers Thor a sly smile as he sketches out the beginnings of a plan.

What he is really offering Thor is his revenge.

*

The plan is soon half forged. It is a plan that will allow Thor to regain his certainty that when he steps, the ground will be there. It is a plan that will let Thor sleep without fear of nightmares in which he fights forever against himself and loses, struggling hopelessly against the invisible force that makes his limbs move without his choosing, that turns him into a puppet enslaved to another’s will. It is a good plan, and Thor’s mouth pulls into a strained, furious smile at the awareness of it, at the shape of it in his mind.

So why is it that he also feels… disappointment growing in the pit of his stomach? Why is it that he suddenly feels lost?  

He knows why when he sees Loki’s mirroring, bright-eyed grin and thinks of the body he held close in the night.

“And what then?” Thor asks, before he can stop himself.

Loki’s soft chuckle trails off. “What then, what?”

“After this is over... what are we to do? Are we to be enemies again? Are we to go back to how things were?”

Loki does not precisely sober, but his smile becomes a wry one. “We _are_ enemies, Thor. We have been enemies for longer than you’ve known, and nothing has been mended by a few days of managing to be civil to each other. You cannot have possibly thought otherwise.”

But Thor does not believe it. He cannot believe it, and he says so.

*

The last time they fought...

The last time they fought it had been a brawl, dirty and vicious, and something in Thor, pulled and strained for too long, had broken. So many times Loki had _renounced_ him, and after each time Thor had gone on fighting Loki endlessly in the days and grieving him in the nights, with neither feeling ever able to wholly blot out the other. All this time, while Loki’s viciousness brought everything to ruin, while Loki scorned him and mocked him and renounced him—Thor had still somehow believed that his brother yet loved him, somewhere deep beneath his hurt and his madness. Thor _grieved_ for the loss of the one before him—how could it be that Loki did not understand that?—he was grieving still…

That time, as they battled each other, the anger and frustration had boiled over. Thor had answered Loki’s denial of their kinship with his own rage.

In the heat of their battle he had said… words he will not recall to his mind now. And he’d known right away how deep the cut had gone from the way Loki went pale, the betrayed shock that filled his hollowed-out eyes… but in the moment he had not cared. He had been _glad_. He had felt a terrible satisfaction to have hurt Loki as Loki had so often hurt him, and as Loki fled he had wondered, idly, if he might have driven him away completely this time.

He had not seen Loki again until Loki rescued him.

And Loki, who can nurse a grudge for a hundred years—for a thousand years, for an eternity—has not breathed a word about it. He let Thor cling to him in the night like a frightened child, without a single jest at his expense.

Thor cannot think of it now without sickening guilt overtaking him. And that is all the more reason that he must now speak. He must now tell his brother how he feels, his sorrow and his gladness for what he now knows. This time Loki must listen, and from where he sits Thor reaches for him, lifts one hand to rest just at the edge of Loki’s neck in his accustomed grip, fingers in the softness of his dark hair. Thor aches at the feel of it.

The look Loki gives him in return is wary, but he does not pull immediately away, and Thor takes courage from that.

“I know your secret, brother,” he begins, and he almost smiles when Loki stiffens slightly in his grasp, green eyes narrowing, before he continues. “You have said that the reason you rescued me was out of pragmatism. But you are cleverer than that. What did you gain by offering me succor while you sought a way to defeat him? You could have left me there until you had found it. You could have left me to that misery and not cared one whit. And after the things I said to you when last we met… I would not have blamed you if you had.” 

Now Loki is staring at him fully; Thor takes a deep, difficult breath before he goes on. It is hard to say it. It is hard to voice what he now so decisively knows, because for a while he had not believed. But he is determined.

“You could have abandoned me to my fate, and I would never have known. So the only reason for you to have done it… was to spare me any more of the pain of that ignominious imprisonment, because you care for me. Because you love me. No matter how you would deny it.”

 “I don’t… that is not...” Loki murmurs, astounded.

“But you do,” Thor says, feeling himself smiling though his chest is tight, though he is almost frantic with the desperation to say his piece and have Loki hear him. “I have known you all our lives, and you cannot lie to me, you cannot deceive me any longer. I know it now.”

Loki is gaping at him. A moment later he pushes Thor’s hand away. “If you truly believe the ridiculous prattle that just crossed your lips, then—”

But Thor won’t allow it. He follows, reaches to take hold of Loki again. “You _rescued_ me, Loki, you _saved_ me, you cannot tell me that I should still believe you despise me—”

“Enough!” Loki snarls, throwing him back with a vicious shove. “Not another word, Thor, I do not want to hear even one more word!”

Thor’s mouth opens to continue… but finds that he cannot. It is like his throat has swollen shut; he cannot speak…

 _Not another word_.

Loki glares at him across the humming tension between them, waiting for him to offend once more, but Thor has been silenced.

It takes a moment before realization dawns for Loki, but when it does, he gives a breathy, startled laugh.

“Oh,” he says. “I had actually forgotten about that.”

*

And because Loki is Loki, he does not rescind the order any time soon.

Loki does not take back the command when Thor scowls at him, when Thor gestures. He does not do so when Thor sits in morose silence or when he pleads at Loki with his eyes.

“No, Thor, I don’t think I want to hear what you have to say right now,” Loki tells him. “Perhaps you should have thought of that before attempting to badger me with your foolish fantasies.”

In response, Thor punches him in the arm, hard and brotherly. Which makes Loki exclaim in protest, rubbing at the spot.

“You’re hardly helping your case.”

Loki does not give in to Thor’s entreaties (such as they are) because, well, he needs a moment. He had indeed somehow forgotten that the Purple Man’s power is still at work on Thor’s will, and the realization throws him. He needs time to sort it out in his head.

Thor does not make it easy for him; he is a perfect distraction as he flings himself down on the bed, huffing in frustration and thumping his fist against the mattress, and Loki doesn’t know if that is worse than having to listen to his ridiculous theories about Loki’s motives or his awkward, ham-handed apologies.

Loki clenches his jaw and closes his eyes and tries to pretend that he is not fully aware that Thor is trying to glare holes in his back.

 _How_ was Thor still so easily able to get under his skin? Just as it had been in their last fight—and oh, Thor simply _had_ to remind him of that—when Loki had stupidly allowed himself to be drawn in, only to have Thor confront him with sudden fury. And then the words Thor spat at him, with a virulence Loki had not thought him capable of…

It had taken a month until Loki had regained control of himself enough to return.

But then he had come back and found Thor helpless. More than helpless: weakened and abused and under a spell that stripped away his strength and made him the easiest of prey.

Loki is still conscious of Thor’s silent fuming behind him, but he forces his tensed body to relax.

Thor would ask why Loki had rescued him. But the real question is why Loki has held off so long in taking what has fallen into his hands.

So Loki turns, looks over at where his brother is sprawled out wearing a pair of Loki’s clothes that barely fit him, rubbing the heels of his hands across his face and glaring at the ceiling and waiting for Loki’s whim to pass and for him to allow Thor again to speak.

He looks at him, and Loki knows already what he is going to do. He should not, but he will. There is not a single doubt in his mind.  

Something in his stomach flutters at the thought.

He goes over to where Thor sprawls with eyes closed. The motion of Loki’s weight sinking down beside him makes Thor peek out from beneath his lids—but just enough to express his aggravation before again he rolls his head back, shuts his eyes, slings an arm over them to make it even more final. He is unwilling to cooperate if he is not allowed to speak.

Of course, Loki can’t have that.

“Look at me, Thor,” he says, and he is sure he takes far too much pleasure in the immediacy of the reaction and how clearly grudging it is, and yet how equally clear that Thor cannot stop himself.  

Thor pushes himself up onto his elbows, and blue eyes meet Loki’s. Blond lashes that do not quiver.

Loki favors him with a hint of a smile. “You’re mistaken, you know. About why I did it.”

It is a pleasant change that for once Thor cannot answer with nonsense and distract Loki from what he means to say, that for once he must merely listen and cannot respond, and Loki enjoys it as Thor scowls at him.

“When I found you… I was not coming to help you,” Loki says with a sigh. “I was not even truly _looking_ for you. The fact of the matter was, I had been away. And when I returned and found everything strange with no readily apparent cause, I thought to myself that surely you and your pet mortals would be somewhere near the center of the trouble. So I went. It seemed the quickest way to find out. It had nothing to do with you. Though I admit I _was_ shocked to find you in such a state.”

Thor squirms, and Loki knows he is aching to reply. That is of course no reason to let him. In fact, Loki draws it all out further, savoring every word.

“Yes, brother, it shocked me: the mighty Thor, defeated and defiled, with your pride and all your hope sunk dead and cold in the bottom of your eyes. How had such a thing happened to you? I doubt I would have believed had I not seen. But you have to understand… so many times I had dreamed of your utter ruin, yet never in all my dreams had I imagined it like that. Never in all my dreams had it ever been so _tempting_.”

As he speaks Loki finds himself creeping closer, studying the way his words sink in, watching in fascination as Thor struggles to understand, his face crumpling and contorting with the effort. Thor is, as always, slow to grasp the change, clinging to what he preferred to believe, but this new reality is something he should be used to. He should know how to meet Loki as an enemy by now, and it is clear that he is trying, despite his current disadvantage. His eyes harden, he sets his jaw. Loki only smiles.

 “The only trouble was that it was someone other than _me_ forcing you to your knees,” Loki adds. “So yes, brother, I ‘rescued’ you...”

Thor looks now as if he would beg—for Loki to stop, for himself to awaken, for it not to be so.

“But only because I wanted you for myself.”

*

The great, dark ocean stirs beneath Thor’s feet. The sky tilts above him.

He does not understand what Loki is saying to him. He truly cannot comprehend, as if the words were not words at all but noise, a chaos of syllables that he cannot piece together. It is worse because it is Loki’s voice, but no longer silver. It is soft and roughened, and Thor does not understand that either.

Loki is telling him that he _watched_ and it _pleased him._ Thor cannot look away from his brother; he is pinned by Loki’s gaze, by the hungry gleam shimmering in the darkness of his eyes, a look that Thor has never seen there before, though it sparks something like fear or dread in the pit of Thor’s stomach. Loki is telling him that he saved him, but not out of love for him; he did it so that he could…

… no, Thor cannot claim he does not understand.  

A shiver passes through him.

He knows he is about to be compelled again, his will subsumed under that strange power, and that is enough to send icewater coursing his veins and sweat springing to his skin at once, as everything he suffered at the mortal villain’s hands comes rushing back into his thoughts. He is about to be compelled again, forced into—

Only this time it is not to be a stranger doing it.

Thor thinks he could not speak now even if it were not for the compulsion. He cannot catch his breath, feels himself becoming frantic. Loki takes note of it, his own expression changing to a mask of tender concern as his hands rise to gently cup Thor’s face. He makes his voice soothing and soft.

“I’m so sorry, brother. This is the last thing you need, is it not? Just when you were feeling so very brotherly toward me and believing I felt the same. And after all that you’ve endured.” Loki clicks his tongue softly, and he is clearly aware that Thor still cannot speak, for he does not wait for an answer before he begins a slow caress, just his fingertips tracing down the edge of Thor’s cheek, to his neck, along his collarbone, and his fingers then fold under, his knuckles brushing against the throb of Thor’s pulse.

The shiver laces through Thor’s body again, more powerfully.

“Don’t fight me, brother. Let me have what I want.” Loki’s voice is breathy and thin, but it is a command nonetheless, and Thor thus cannot even try to resist as Loki drags him closer, arms wrapping around Thor’s body, possessive and deceptively powerful. Then Loki’s mouth is on his and Thor is tasting his brother’s kiss for the first time. The demanding slide of his brother’s tongue, a thumb against his cheekbone, a body pushing him back against the pillows. All Thor can do is submit to it, and Loki only grows more forceful each time Thor gives in a little further.

Thor’s heart pounds within his chest, his whole being strained with the desire to struggle; he is almost wretched at the feeling of being controlled once again. Yet no part of him can believe that this is the same. This is _Loki_ —

Loki’s hand tangles in his hair. Thor gasps when teeth close on his lip, and again when Loki at last pulls back, his lips slick and dark and slightly open, his lids heavy and the lashes making an inky veil over deceitful green, as if he is lightheaded from the sense of control, drunk with it. But then Loki’s eyes fix upon Thor, as if he is now sure, after a first trial, what he can do to the brother who is so completely at his mercy.

It is worse, Thor finally decides, that it is Loki doing this to him. It must be worse, for while he knows he should loathe this, should be scalded with rage, the feeling that takes him over as Loki begins is instead only that seeping dread, a feeling of fear that makes his breaths come too quick and his heart flutter, as if he has been plunged into icy depths. Every touch of Loki’s hands on him makes him tense and twitch, as if each nerve were raw. Each caress makes him shiver.

He can feel the soft hum of Loki’s amusement at his reaction, at his discomfort, at his powerlessness, and thus is a heavy wave of shame added to the swirling storm within him.

It is worse that it is Loki. It _must_ be worse.

Loki bends over him then and brushes a few kisses to either side of his scowling mouth, a breath tracing across each cheek—a mockery of comfort, carried out because his fingers have just begun to creep beneath Thor’s clothes, peeling them back and tickling along sensitized skin as Thor’s heart pounds.

*

Loki had thought that it would spoil his fun a bit to know that it was not his own magic compelling Thor to his will, but he barely thinks of that now. He has far more interesting things to concern himself with, like the lazy, careless path his hands make as he removes Thor’s clothes. He had also thought he would make Thor do that, make him stand and strip off the borrowed sweatpants and t-shirt that fit him so snugly and so delectably while Loki looked on. But now Loki finds he can’t bear not to do it himself, his hands never leaving Thor’s skin as more and more of it is bared—his broad chest shuddering with each heavy breath, and Loki’s thumbs tracing the peaks as he pushes away fabric. The tensed planes of his stomach. Like this Loki can still watch Thor’s eyes, drinking down his helplessness, and he can make Thor help, lifting his hips as Loki moves slowly down his body—

Thor makes a soft sound, almost a whimper, when the waistband slides downward, catching against his half-thickened cock, and that... oh, that is very interesting.

But Loki only lifts an eyebrow to himself over it and continues on, tugging the garment down off Thor’s ankles and then crawling up again to drink in the look on his face, left so vulnerably naked in Loki’s bed while Loki, still fully clothed, hovers over him.

Thor does indeed look terribly flushed, and he seems to have trouble meeting Loki’s eyes.

Loki supposes it was just the sensuous touch that put him in such a state, and he tests his theory with a hand coming to rest at the top of Thor’s strong thigh, fingers delving into the parting between them and kneading the soft flesh he finds there, uncomfortably close...

Thor bites his lip, brows twisting low. His body squirms as his prick hardens further.

Loki cannot help but smile. “Brother, you know if you keep up like that, I won’t even have to order you to enjoy it.”

The look Thor flashes him in response is so miserably conflicted that Loki almost cannot help but laugh.

He also cannot help but take in the image before him, and it almost steals his breath. It is the most appealing thing he has ever seen: Thor still looks created of stormy gold, shaped into the perfect strength that Loki knows so well from all the times it has been turned against him, all the times he has fallen short against it… yet to have Thor now squirming and helpless, naked in his bed, to have him completely under Loki’s control, unable to resist him… it is like heady mead, and Loki reels with it. In search of more, he leans up with one hand to hold Thor’s jaw in place so that he must accept Loki’s gaze, and he finds lightning in those eyes, yet it is useless struggle, a futile protest. Loki makes a show of ignoring it, merely to watch the pinkness take over yet more of Thor’s cheeks. Loki can take anything he wants. Thor can do nothing but submit.

Loki is sure this is the wickedest thing he has ever done. And he shudders from how badly he wants it as he moves in to claim Thor’s mouth a second time.

There is _so much_ Loki wants to do to him that he feels almost overwhelmed, his mind racing with every way he intends to have Thor before they are through. He means to make Thor grovel before him, showing his servitude with his tongue, bring him low in all the ways that the proud thunderer would never otherwise submit to. He means make Thor _beg_ , he means to make Thor weep with shame. He means to drench Thor in his sweat, fill him with his seed, sate himself with it all so well that Thor can never again look at Loki without remembering how thoroughly Loki had him—he shoves his tongue farther down his brother’s throat at the thought, feels Thor’s hands gripping at his arms in answer, as if by how tightly he squeezes he can protest what Loki is doing to him, now that he lacks any other way to complain. As if he would be pushing him away if he could.

Loki likes that idea. And though he had told himself he would not rush, he finds now he simply cannot wait.

He is still kissing Thor, fiercely, as he nudges his knees apart and slides between them. He is still kissing Thor as, then, he shoves down his own trousers just enough, draws himself out, fumbles at the bedside drawer for something and does a complicated one-handed operation that ends with a pair of well-slicked fingers lowered between them. Thor’s body stiffens, startled—and then relaxes again when Loki orders him to in a command whispered against his lips, to which Thor responds with a shaky sigh.

Thor relaxes; Loki does not, and he can feel himself trembling in tense anticipation as he lines himself up, breaking the kiss as he does so; he has to watch, has to be able to focus. He has to see Thor’s expression as he does this to him, as Loki conquers him at last.  

He fights to keep his voice steady as he tells Thor what he is going to do, toying with a lock of blond hair between his fingers, hearing Thor’s panting breaths and his gasp as Loki rubs the head of his cock firmly against his entrance.

But the lightning in Thor’s eyes has dampened. He stares up at Loki in hopeless surrender. And he _moans_ when Loki begins to push inside.

*

Thor can feel his brother trembling.

Thor’s own nerves have been aflame from the first moment Loki touched him, from the feeling of Loki stripping his clothes from his body. That slow show of dominance, and the dark glint in Loki’s eyes as he looked him over, dangerous and predatory. Thor had been uncertain, disbelieving. Thor had been _afraid._

Now… now he is merely lost.  

Loki had been already trembling as he nudged his way between Thor’s legs, and looked as if he had to work himself up to what he would do next, convince himself that he could simply take what he wanted and have it be done. He had kissed Thor fiercely, possessively, and there had been nothing leisurely about it when he went to work Thor’s body open to ready him, the motions impatient and unsteady with obvious desire.

Thor has never seen his brother so nervous before.

Loki is still trembling, even as he radiates triumph, as he claims Thor in a long, slow thrust that fills him with heat. And Thor cannot help the choked, stuttering moan that sneaks out of him into the silence of their breathing as Loki works his way carefully inside.

He is aware of the rush of his racing pulse in his ears, the swollen feel of it behind his ribs and in his throat. He is aware of Loki watching him, wide-eyed and fixated. He is aware that he is powerless under his brother’s control, unable to do anything but submit to whatever Loki demands… and he is suddenly aware that he _wants_ Loki to take what he desires from him.

He becomes aware that he is still gripping tight to Loki’s braced arms when Loki sneers out an order for him to lift his hands up above his head, to grip onto the headboard if he feels he must hold onto something. Thor does as he is told, obedient, gazing up at the shadows of his brother’s face framed by its sweep of black hair. The position makes him yet more vulnerable, and he feels that he is offering himself up to Loki, in the hopes of receiving more of the soft-voiced commands that caress him like silken bonds.

Loki indulges in a first few slow, rolling thrusts, slick and easy and hot, and Thor does not even try to rein in his body’s reaction. He cannot control the way his legs tighten around Loki’s hips or the jumble of groans and whimpers that spill from his throat as Loki obliges by grinding hard against him.

And Loki is still trembling as he begins to fuck him truly.

*

It is everything he has wanted and yet Loki feels lost, feels that certainty has slipped through his fingers along with all control.

Loki tries to watch, to glory in his victory as he defiles his beautiful, arrogant, foolish brother. But it is not long before he is forced to look away, before he must drop his head so that Thor can no longer look speechlessly up at him as if Loki is all that is left in the world.

He presses the dampness of his brow against Thor’s cheek. He buries a hand in Thor’s hair and tugs his head to the side so Loki can mouth his way down Thor’s jaw, lick at the place where his pulse rushes, sink his teeth into the flesh to hear Thor’s sharp whine.

It was not meant to be like this. He meant to ruin Thor, to debase him, to steal such an easy victory over Thor that he would never be able to recover from the shame of it. He meant to prove to Thor that he does not love him, that he has thrown off all the absurd, childish sentiments between them, that Thor will _never again_ get under his skin.

Yet every time he tries to hurt Thor, every time he opens his mouth to tell Thor those things, to insist upon it, panic rises within him as he remembers how Thor looked broken. Bent shivering over a table, abused, his eyes dulled and reddened with tears.

He remembers his own desire. And the mindless blaze of his own rage.

Doing this to Thor now must be the wickedest thing he has ever done, and Loki cannot stop himself.

He cannot stop himself from snaking an arm under Thor’s back, needing to hold Thor as tightly to himself as possible—Thor arches up to allow it without being told, which makes Loki bite his lip against his own almost pained moan—so that he can fuck Thor roughly, viciously, thrilling at each obscene, slick, wet sound their bodies make together and at the way they make Thor writhe.

Thor is _his._ Thor is _his,_ and if anyone is going to destroy him—

It is only when some minutes later Thor’s moans begin to grow desperate that Loki notices—Thor’s cock is a hard, urgent heat between them, and as soon as Loki pulls back enough to give him the opening Thor surges up and seeks his mouth hungrily. A pleading noise whines out from between his parted lips, but of course Thor does not need words to make himself understood with perfect clarity: no matter that he is being taken like this, against his will, he still would have his release granted to him. He would spill, cry out and writhe in pleasure while his brother ruts possessively into his body.

At the realization Loki cannot breathe, can barely choke out a sound of disbelief, yet he has his hand wrapped around Thor’s cock before he can think, and he forces out what should be a stern command but is instead a strained gasp, ordering Thor to come just like that, with Loki’s hand stroking him and Loki’s cock inside him.

And oh, Thor obeys. With a shout he spills over Loki’s fingers, powerful tremors racking through him, his whole body clenching and his eyes squeezing shut with the force of it, until at last his arms go limp over his head and all his joints go loose.

Loki keeps fucking him, driving into him in feverish thrusts, gathering Thor’s slack body in his arms and kissing his neck until he too can hold off no longer.

*

In the warmth after, Loki doesn’t move. He keeps Thor pinned beneath him for what seems like half an eternity, and Thor can feel the twitching of Loki’s arm around him, his muscles tensing unsteadily as if he is unsure whether he wishes to tug Thor closer or shove himself suddenly away.

At least at some point Loki managed to shuck off his own clothes so that they are skin to skin now; Thor is glad of that, certain that this is far more comfortable than it could be.

Loki’s other hand wanders up and down Thor’s body in a distracted sort of way.

But it is undoubtedly a lover’s caress, soothing and tender, rather than a conqueror’s prerogative, and when Thor at last gets his breath back a craving has built up—all this time without words and now he wants them. He wants to be able to murmur his own love and adoration. Yet he can’t, and the craving becomes a low, throbbing ache within him.

Loki has still not moved except to touch him and to let himself slip out and to remold his body against Thor’s, shifting as sweat cools and dries and as little aches begin to set in. But just as Thor resolves to make himself heard one way or another Loki lifts his head and nuzzles against Thor’s cheek. He keeps his eyes closed, searching blindly for Thor’s mouth.

There is a damp sheen at the corners of Loki’s closed eyes.

Eventually, the slow, lazy kiss seems to warm Loki again and the stillness passes.

Then Loki leans back, with all trace of tears gone from his face. A long and steady exhalation stirs the air. A knife-thin smile, as if this moment of tenderness never happened.

And Thor is helpless under his brother’s control, so there is nothing at all he can do to avert his fate.

*


	4. Chapter 4

Thor sleeps more deeply than he probably has any right to, but he does not become aware of that fact until after he wakes, at which point it is decidedly too late.

He wakes, of course, naked, sticky, over-warm, and uncomfortable. He wakes to the subtle, swollen feeling in his throat that means that Loki still has not lifted the prohibition on his speaking. And he wakes also to a warm, rumpled place among the blankets next to him, surely vacated only minutes before, but nonetheless now empty.

As such, Thor wakes and slowly gets himself up and waits, unsurprised to find Loki gone.

After enough time passes Thor thinks briefly of thumping a fist on the walls as a signal that he has woken (Loki has neglected to ever order him not to be pointlessly destructive, which seems at this point like an unwise oversight), but he decides against it.

Loki turns up again a short while later with clothes that actually fit Thor, and with breakfast, and with no apparent inclination at all to discuss what happened the night before.

Loki endures Thor’s glare while Thor dresses and while they both eat, and he makes a show of not noticing until at last, exasperated, he turns his gaze back at his brother.

“What?” Loki says.

Thor slowly, carefully, puts down his coffee mug and makes a gesture toward his own mouth.  

Loki gives a tired lift of his eyebrows and waves one hand in airy acquiescence. “All right. All right. I was enjoying the quiet, but fine. Speak.”

Thor tests it, calling Loki something rather offensive, and he finds that doing so improves his mood.

Accordingly, the next thing he does is punch Loki on the shoulder. (Hard. And brotherly.)

“That is for leaving me like that all night,” Thor growls, while Loki rubs at the sore spot and stares at him, blinking warily.

“Well,” Loki says slowly after a moment. “Is there more where that came from?”

 _Is there more?_ Thor thinks. After how they had spent the night before, Loki returns, pretending that it did not happen except to ask whether Thor means to hit him for it?

It is only more infuriating when Loki merely rolls his eyes at Thor’s obvious consternation.

“I only ask because I may need my arm today, so it would probably be better if you could save the rest of your vengeance for later. You see, I intend to help you expend it before you have a chance to get back to me. Or at least so I will hope,” Loki adds with a dark smile. “I think we’ve put this off long enough, don’t you?”

“I thought our plan was unfinished,” Thor says, though.

“It wasn’t ready only because _I_ wasn’t ready,” Loki informs him with a shrug.

“And you are now?”

Loki looks him in the eye. “Yes. Because you are.”

Thor snorts.

But, well, perhaps it’s true. He is ready, and he feels—rather than that sick, wounded fear fermenting in his stomach—he feels a growing anticipation as they prepare to depart.

The last of these preparations... Loki seems to wish to put it off as long as he can, and he only stops Thor, holding up a finger as he paces before the door to the room where Loki has kept him, at the last moment.

Years ago, all Thor would have needed to know was that Loki had a plan. He would have accepted it, relied upon Loki to tell him what he needed to know and, beyond that, would have simply trusted Loki to arrange things to come out the way they both wanted. Yet much has changed. And as Loki stands before him, looking him over in intense scrutiny as if it might be his last chance to do so, Thor asks what they are going to do. How they will defeat the Purple Man.

“My original solution to keeping his influence from controlling you cannot be relied upon for this,” Loki says. “By now he’ll have had time to think up a dozen ways around it— _I_ could have. Fortunately for you, I’m fairly sure I’ve come up with another way to shield you, using my own magic. Once we get there, though, we will not want to face your friends in battle, so we will gather up any of them that we can find and shield them as well. And then... to deal with the mortal himself... we will see what challenges he presents us when we get there, I suppose.”

Thor frowns; it is not quite what he had hoped for, although he couldn’t have said exactly what that would have been. And at least, he thinks, Loki means to free the other Avengers as well at the earliest opportunity.

Loki gives one last reluctant sigh, his eyelids fluttering nearly closed as he reaches up to, apparently, ensorcel the air around Thor’s ears. There is a moment of a low, distant humming sound and a faint whistle as of wind in high branches, a flash of heat and cold, and then it’s done and Loki is rocking back on his heels and looking suddenly away.

Thor realizes then that Loki must have devised this solution yesterday while Thor slept and had put off freeing Thor from the compulsion until just at the last moment before it became absolutely necessary. He could have freed Thor before…

Thor doesn’t say a word about this realization. He only asks if it is done. Loki nods, and with that they depart and Thor follows his brother out the door.

*

Thor has not truly been out and about since all this began. At the beginning, under the Purple Man’s control, he had left the Tower only to serve as the strength of the villain’s arm, and people fled in fear when he appeared, leaving ruins in his wake. The night that Loki guided him back to his lair, of course, Thor had noticed nothing of the surrounding world at all aside from his misery at being in it. And since then he has seen the outdoors only through a pane of glass, a distant and unimportant vision of lights and shapes and moving shadows.

Now, though, they walk through familiar streets made strange by the sense of uneasiness in the air. The same acrid city odors, but the people he passes—those who have been ordered to go about the business of their lives, those still under the villain’s far-reaching control—don’t seem to want to meet any other eyes.

He understands. He understands their helplessness and their shame and how it grates upon their souls like a harsh shackle chafing away the skin.

“No,” Loki snaps, before Thor has a chance to voice his pity for them. “Don’t bother to say it. We do not have all day, and I haven’t got the strength to shield a million worthless mortals.”

Not to mention that doing so would cause a panic that would ruin their whole plan before they’ve even started, Thor thinks. But of course Loki doesn’t say that.

And soon enough the tall, sweeping angle of the Tower looms, and Thor’s breath catches as he stares up at it. The reflective glass shines too bright in the sunlight, and there are stark black corners of shadow cast upon the ground, but to Thor it had been, well, not quite home but a welcoming abode filled with fond memories. No longer.

With an air of nonchalance, Loki strides up to the set of broad doors, waits a moment for someone to emerge, passing him without comment, and steps within himself.  

Thor is but a few paces behind.

*

The broad foyer of the Avengers Tower. Marble floors and indirect lighting and gleaming metallic accents and, fortunately, only a handful of the Purple Man’s drones hanging around the welcome desk as Loki strides within, smiling at them as they recognize him, as their faces twist in the peculiar series of expressions of those whose instant reaction is at odds with what they have been compelled to do, which is again at odds with the thought that comes a moment later: he is a monster, a villain, a rescuer, a mystery, an unknown, and the uncertainty freezes them for long enough for him to take in the sight of all of them, scanning the corners of the room, and to announce in a clear, calm voice that he would be most pleased if they could all stay just where they are and not react to his presence or to his brother’s—Thor just at that moment appears behind him as he stands before them, holding their suddenly rapt attention in his upturned hands—and, when they have gone, to forget that they were there.

There is, after he says it, a rolling sigh of relief that cuts off in a moment of blinking, milling confusion as they all settle back into their places. And Loki chuckles to himself as he grabs Thor’s arm and moves them both forward, into the hallway beyond.

“At least once, before this is all over, you must try that. Just to know what it feels like,” Loki says, taking a deep, appreciative breath.

Of course, he doesn’t have to look at him to feel Thor’s disapproval sloughing off him like heat from a sun-baked stone at dusk, or to see out of the corner of his eye the uncomfortable roll of Thor’s shoulders as he does not answer. Both send a little twist of dark satisfaction through Loki’s belly, a little shock of heat just like the way Thor looked at him that morning when Loki at last let him speak again.

Loki laughs once more at that, though he soon enough falls silent as they move on, beginning their mission truly.

He has no illusions that it will all be as simple as that first little theatrical flourish.

And it seems Thor shares his view, for soon enough beside him Thor subsides into grim alertness, as if they were on one of their long-ago hunts, except this is no wood on Alfheim, no murk of a dwarven swamp. They pass a few more mortal drones here and there—Loki deals with them each time, murmuring a few words to stop them in their tracks before setting them harmlessly on their way again—but there are no sounds of alarm or impending battle, and Loki can only hope this means that their presence is as yet undetected.

Their first stop is the door of Captain America. Loki knows already somewhat what to expect, from his earlier wanderings as he gathered information two days before; he knows the mortal villain’s sense of humor, and he feels sure that the wholesome, flag-draped hero was too amusing a target to pass up. Thor also clearly knows, and dreads.

And it is out of some final bit of deference to Thor’s feelings, thus, that Loki clamps his lips shut when they find the man within, so that only a muffled snort emerges.

It takes but a moment to release him as well from the compulsion, and then only a few more for the man to scramble for his clothes, leaving the damp, stained scrap of starry fabric to fall unheeded to the floor.

After that point, Steve conceals his distress well, his jaw stiffening beneath his smile as Thor greets him with a profusion of apologies for not being here sooner and as he answers, squeezing the thunder god’s arm and telling him not to apologize—telling him how glad they all were to hear he’d escaped, how he’d known Thor would come through for them as soon as he could.

Loki watches, and he is somewhat surprised when Steve turns his gaze toward him, the edge of his wariness softening only when Thor explains that he would not have escaped at all if Loki had not come for him and when Loki acknowledges the words with a bare hint of a shrug, gazing back steadily.

Steve is altogether too earnest, the effort altogether too conscious, when he looks Loki in the eye and thanks him.

They find the others just as easily, just as swiftly. They find them one by one, release them from the constraint of the Purple Man’s power. Natasha first, and with her help they locate Clint, and at last they seek out Banner. They are each quick to grasp the plan from there, quick to quash their own long-suppressed miseries in favor of purposeful action.

And it would be impossible not to notice how Thor takes heart with each one. He brightens when Natasha throws her arms around him for a moment after they find her, her eyes squeezing shut, telling him how glad she is that he’s okay. Thor sighs with relief when, upon coming out of the hold of the villain’s spell and ceasing to blink around at them like a frightened bird, Clint gives him a grateful nod as he sits back, looking disoriented but recovering fast. When they find Banner within his haze of pungent smoke and draw him out as well (it takes only a little extra magic on Loki’s part to sober him), Thor begins to look truly pleased, surrounded again by his friends, as if that means victory is already assured.

It would be impossible also not to note how they all look at him, at Loki, even with Thor’s words; they are clearly uneasy, some more than others.

Loki thinks he should be more amused by this than he is, and he finds himself merely lingering at the edge of the crowd, gifting any who look his way with a stiff sneer. And he is glad when their happy little reunion is done and they turn their attention back to practical matters—like the matter of the final Avenger they have yet to find.

Natasha is the first to speak. “They’re both up in Stark’s workshop, probably,” she says, her eyes flicking across all her friends. “Ever since, um, Thor disappeared, the Purple Man has spent most of his time up there. Chivvying Tony along on the machine he’s building, and... other things. I never could figure out what.”

Clint raises an eyebrow at her, and she shrugs.

“He asked me not to be curious. He never told me not to pay attention.”

It’s a few moments while they all take this in, while they begin to make the first tentative motions of heading out, but Banner at last speaks up.

“So, okay, I get the gist of the plan. But what are we going to do after we get up there?”

“We stop him,” Steve says. “Whatever way we have to.”

“But after that?” says Banner, with a nervous little smile as if he’s thought farther ahead with this than the rest of them, which might well be true.

Clint, who still has a too-bright gleam to his eyes, looks up sharply. “I vote we gut him,” he says. Then, as if by way of explanation he adds, “I don’t like having my mind messed with.” (Loki _is_ amused by that. Particularly at how the man avoids looking at him as he says it, as if anyone there could possibly be fooled.)

Steve, however, objects to the suggestion. “That’s not how we do things. And everyone is going to want to see this guy get what he deserves. Openly. Publicly. That won’t happen if we kill him here and now, no matter how much we’d like to.”

There is a moment where they all consider this, and it seems the argument might turn into a bitter one: Loki can see them each considering, sorting through their desires and weighing them against what they think is right.

He sits back, sighing, when they all reluctantly agree not to kill the villain unless they have to.

That is when Hawkeye at last turns to him, bristling and scowling. “You know, maybe you of all people should be glad that’s not how we do things.”

Loki is _definitely_ amused. “I’m only here to help,” he says, giving the archer a toothy smile.

But it’s decided, and there’s no more reason to delay, except for the brief detour they make to Thor’s level to where Mjolnir was left behind in their earlier escape.

The hammer, of course, sits just where Thor left it, its great weight safely immovable, yet Thor approaches with caution, crossing the floor as if it might be a span of ice that will give way at a false step. The other Avengers wait in the doorway, but Loki lets himself wander forward after him, just a little bit.

By the time Thor returns with the hammer looped through his belt, he has himself under control again, and he gives his brother a flicker of a smile as they both turn back.

*

At the top of the Avengers Tower, on the level where Tony Stark’s workshop lies, there is a man who does not belong there, though he has long since made himself at home.

He has also spent the last few days decidedly put out at the loss of one of his favorite toys. But he likes to be positive about things, so in the end he had chalked the loss up to a lesson, a mistake he wouldn’t make again and a warning for the future. A way to make his own plans better.

So now he sits casually in the little den in the center of the workshop, surrounded by wires and tools and pieces of circuitry and the humming and tapping of his other favorite plaything hard at work at one of the multitude of projects he has set him to. He leans back in the chair at a dangerous angle, arms folded behind his head, and he is with every cell of his body viscerally aware of where he is. He’s in the room where, in only a very short while, the device to transmit his influence around the world will at last be finished. He’s in the nerve center of what is perhaps the most advanced building on the planet, owned by a former weapons magnate whose hobbies are still not what anyone would call harmless. He’s in control of it all, with anything that he wants delivered to him at but a word.

He has before him an array of lovely holographic screens, transmitting with flawless perfection the surveillance feed from every level below.

Well, he thinks as he watches the little group creep through the nearly empty halls. His favorite toy has returned on its own.

What a nice surprise.

*

The way up to Stark’s level is deserted. The halls are silent, so silent that they echo with every light footfall, and they all travel in a loose group. Each of them moves with quiet efficiency and with purpose, through enemy territory.

And how strange it is, Thor finds, to have Loki among them, to have his brother on his side among the Avengers. Even if it is only an uneasy temporary alliance, it is still something Thor has never experienced on this realm, and he finds he likes it. Loki feigns to pay the rest no attention—or maybe he truly doesn’t care what they do, but Thor knows he has felt Loki’s eyes on him. Loki feigns an aloof look and a casual stroll while the others crouch and creep, but Thor knows him better than that, knows that Loki is aware of every whisper and every shadow.

And even if the others would not agree, Thor feels better knowing that his brother is on their side, and he wishes it could always be this way.

He puts the thought out of his mind, though, as they reach Stark’s level. As they come near to the entrance to his workshop, quiet mechanical sounds exuding from beyond it, warm light streaking from beneath the door.

After a collective pause, a final breath, Thor steps forward with Mjolnir in his hand, ready for any fight that can come, and pushes through it...

*

What the Purple Man has in his hand is better, though. Or rather, what he has in each of them.

In one—it is what stops Thor before he has taken his third step into the room and stops the rest behind him. The Purple Man holds a sleek, silver-grey handgun, pointed directly at Iron Man's unarmored head, Stark's eyes dark and wide enough to make the sincerity of the threat quite clear. He looks like he hasn’t slept for weeks. He looks as if he has been ordered not to move. Even the slow bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows looks like a painful victory.

In the other, there is something smaller, something less obviously dangerous, yet the Purple Man holds it with far greater reverence.

“Do you really think I’m that stupid?” he says.

The Purple Man thumbs one of the buttons on the small black box in his hand, and the device in the corner of the room hums a little more loudly.

It is a hum in the air, but there is also one in Thor’s head, matching it, and he knows without being told that if it were not for Loki’s counter-magic, he would again be wholly enslaved. As it is he feels paralyzed.

“Now put that down. All of you.”

Thor lets the handle of Mjolnir slide out of his grip, lets the hammer clang to the floor at the same time as a variety of other similar noises ring out behind him.

“Good decision. Because, you see, if you get any help this time... I have this other little button right here. The one that Stark assures me will put a damper on everyone’s day clear across the river.”

The Purple Man’s smile is dark and twisted, but it’s the first ray of hope Thor has had. He did not see if Loki followed them within; he cannot turn now to look. But if Loki is the help he means... Thor can only hope that Loki may find a way for them all to escape this.

The Purple Man gives a disturbing little chuckle, then, glancing down at the device in his hand, and continues. “To be honest, I was a little surprised to find out about that. I think a lot of people would be—to know that the safety of everyone in the city was in the hands of a spoiled rich-kid engineer with his little reactor. But that’s how it always is, isn’t it? Nobody thinks about it, nobody questions it, because that’s how it always is. And do you really think any of these bastards deserve the power they’ve got because of all the good they do? Or could it maybe be that they get it by lying, cheating, stealing, killing? Just as long as they’re doing it to people less powerful than they are, nobody says a word. That’s just how it is. That’s just how the world works. Isn’t that right, Tony?”

The gun nudges harder against Stark’s temple; motionless, he still manages to shudder, wincing on a heavy exhale.

The Purple Man doesn’t seem to notice, his eyes still crawling between his new guests, but coming back most often to Thor.

Thor must do something. He must at least say something.

“Yes, you’re right,” Thor says, hoping to appease him enough to delay. “Your realm has many ills, and there are many who take unfair advantage over those weaker than they, and I would be glad to fight beside you against such things—”

The villain is shaking his head and chuckling, looking at him oddly. “The god, the _prince of the gods_ , is going to tell us about deserving power and using it wisely? When _you_ are the embodiment of everything I’m talking about? You could hardly find a better definition of ‘god’ than ‘somebody who abuses their power over anybody weaker than they are, which is everybody.’ You’re the worst of all of them, because you actually show up, so everyone can really see just how powerless they are. And you think you’re going to tell me something about it? Well, all those lessons I gave you... all those nights we spent together... I guess I didn’t get my point across. But I won’t mind teaching you again.”

The villain leers, and Thor can feel his cheeks flaming despite the sudden rush of chill through his veins. But he can also feel a hand coming to rest gently on his lower back, steadying him, though he cannot see anyone there in his peripheral vision.

And on the other side of him, Steve chooses that moment to force himself a half step forward. “So what’s your plan to stop it, then? You’re doing all this, you’ve got to have one. You think nobody will be able to abuse their power if you have it all? Are you going to tell me that freedom is life’s great lie and everything will be so much better for everyone once you’re the one calling the shots?”

At that, at those words, the air seems to Thor to hiss almost inaudibly—as if someone, a certain sorcerous someone, were biting back a retort—and that hint of a touch, calming and grounding, leaves him. And Thor feels suddenly afraid.

“Of course not,” the Purple Man answers. “But everything will be better for _me_.”

And no one has any reply.

“So here’s what we’re going to do. You’re all going to make like good little heroes and you’re not going to do a damn thing, because if you do I’ll twitch my finger and push this little button here. And if you’re good and you do exactly what I say, then as soon as Tony’s finished up the last few adjustments on my device and the whole world answers to me, I’ll maybe even order you to forget that you ever thought there was anything wrong with my plan. And you can get back to flying around saving people if that’s what you want to do. The only difference will be... you’ll have a new master.”

The whole time, throughout the entirety of the Purple Man’s speech, Thor’s eyes were upon him, watching in horror at the spill of clear, cogent madness, in which truths were turned to arguments for the vilest crimes and pity labored in the service of evil. But now, he watches for a different reason: the shadow that has just appeared behind the mortal villain.

Thor does not move. He does not so much as breathe lest he give something away, and he hopes with all his might that the others will have the sense to do the same.

As Thor watches, Loki leans forward, smug triumph written across him.

“Don’t move,” Loki says smoothly, and it may be a whisper, but the room is silent but for the mechanical hum, and his lips are directly beside the villain’s ear.

The Purple Man’s eyes do not go wide, because that would be moving.

“I know,” Loki says, voice dripping with false sympathy, as he then steps back, reaching to yank the controller and the gun out of the frozen violet-colored fingers and setting them aside. “I shouldn’t be able to do this. You shouldn’t be able to have this _done to_ you. And to be honest, it took me quite a long time to work out how you were immune to your own power—I thought at first you were shielded from it, as I did for them. But a strong enough force can break through any shield, as we have seen. But no—you were _immune_ , weren’t you, as if from a disease? And, well, what happens when the disease mutates? I should thank you for making such a fine device for me to tamper with, I suppose. But I can always simply thank the spoiled brat engineer later if I want.”

Thor can’t stop staring as Loki’s voice drops lower, below the level where he can hear, because there is a glint of bright silver in Loki’s hand, and he is showing it to Thor. He is whispering something in the Purple Man’s ear—something that must be terrifying, if Thor knows Loki at all—but his eyes are fixed on Thor’s, making sure he sees, making sure he knows.

Just there, though, Loki pauses, the knife poised in his hand. Pauses, waiting.

Thor does not move. He says nothing. He looks back unflinching into his brother’s eyes. And Loki holds his gaze, as if he would consecrate what he is about to do to Thor.

In one sharp, deadly motion, the metallic glint is hidden again as he takes Thor’s vengeance for him.

Only then does Loki smile, and the drawn-out gasp from the mortal villain’s mouth and the way he slowly crumples to the floor show the limits of the compulsion.

Loki watches him for a moment then steps over the body, retrieves the controller from the table, squints at it for a moment, and presses a button. And the machine whirs to a halt.

*

It is over then. They are all free, the compulsion breaking and returning their wills to them. There is a wave of happy relief, but even so it will be some time before this is forgotten. Stark, for one, is pale and shaky even as he grins, and Banner looks him over while they both try to ask each other questions about what they’ve missed. Steve frowns down at the body of the villain and the pool of blood slowly congealing around it, but if he is upset at the deadly justice dealt he seems just as much resigned, and that might only be cover for a deeper layer of satisfaction. Natasha and Clint stand off to one side, her hand on his wrist, seeming to communicate without words, taking it all in.

And Thor is watching all of them, remembering how he felt when Loki first released him from his imprisonment a few days before...

Loki has nearly slipped away before Thor realizes it. He is nearly to the door, silent as a shadow, before Thor calls out after him.

Loki flinches at the summons as if to retreat from a blow, but he does stop, turns cautiously back.

“Brother, wait, don’t go,” Thor says when he reaches him.

Loki’s guarded look turns to a vague half-smile. “I thought we cleared this up already between us, Thor. It’s over now; there is no longer any reason to pretend we are more to each other than enemies.”

Loki does not know that he is lying, that he is huddling around the lie to protect it, repeating it to himself again and again as if thereby to make it turn true.

But Thor sees.

He knows Loki still is stung from their most recent battle. He knows Loki believes that Thor wishes to extract vengeance for what Loki did to him last night—that he believes what he did deserves such vengeance and he cannot believe that Thor would not agree. Thor can tell that Loki intends to go on believing that his own reasons for doing all this have been selfish ones, because if the lie is not true, then…

Words would be useless. Thor has seen that; he has not the skill with them, or Loki has too much skill at deflecting them, turning them to his own purposes. Loki can take the same words that cut him to use as weapons for his own hand; he will not see any that Thor can devise as anything but such an attack.

The only hope Thor has is to make his feelings plain, in his own way.

So Thor kisses him, then and there, throwing his arms around Loki’s shoulders as he does it, because it is the only way he can think of, and because he wants to. He kisses him desperately, and there is a brief surprised moment when Loki’s mouth opens under his, and Thor holds him tighter and simply basks—

Loki breaks away sputtering, stares at him from arm’s length, and before Thor can say a word he has turned and disappeared into thin air in a fit of pique.

Thor’s heart sinks a little. But it is not until he recognizes the sudden silence behind him that he turns to find the Avengers all gazing his way, looking astonished. Sheepishly, shrugging away the questions they have not yet voiced, he returns to them. Knowing already that they will not understand.

Tony is the only one to speak—he is still pale and shaky, but with the danger passed and the sleepless weeks piled upon his shoulders it seems his reaction is one of loquacious giddiness.

“You’re really going to have to fill me in on that one. I mean, yeah, okay, I saw. Your brother? Obviously not 100% evil. Maybe just 95%. But I think a pat on the back and an ‘attaboy’ would probably do it, right? Unless you want to get him a cake, you know, thanking him for using up the 5% on us. I know a place that could probably... but, you know, never mind that. Just, enough with the incestuous snogging. It probably sends the wrong message. Or is that an Asgardian thing you’ve just never mentioned before? If it is... I... don’t want to know more about it at all, actually.”

Someone eventually shuts him up somehow.

*

The days that follow are busy.

There is more work to be done than one would expect after such an insidious attack: it is not mostly the physical repairs, the scattered battlegrounds, but instead the countless people now facing uncertainties and fears and nightmares, their sense of control over their own lives shaken. Some lash out to try to take it back; others huddle within their own small safe places, unable to trust.

This is not, in all cases, something that the Avengers were prepared to deal with, as they have their own troubles in that area. The compulsion is over, the memory of it turning less and less present as the hours pass. But it will take longer for the lingering effects to fade—Stark’s occasional exhausted tremor or the hunted look Natasha sometimes tosses over her shoulder. Those will take longer to fade.

(It is worst, perhaps, for Thor, who also sees his own hand in the scorched and crumbled pavement, until it is healed over, and knows that some of the wounded mortals are tormented by lightning in their fearful dreams.)

And then, because it is Midgard and it is always so, there arrive also those who are suddenly very curious about the device that Stark was forced to build and exactly what sort of power it projected, and they come to inquire whether they might study it—for the benefit of all, naturally. For the future, so that this could never happen again.

“Yeah,” Stark told the agents, far steadier after about an entire 24 hours of sleep. “That’s exactly why I destroyed it the first chance I got, along with all the records I had with any useful information about it at all. And I doubt you could even pry it out of my brain, the way I was. Sort of... semi-functional.”

In response, the agents seemed to think a good substitute would be to hear each of them recount their understanding of what happened until they are all sick of speaking.

Thor, for his part, has of course admitted that it was his brother who rescued him. Each time he relates the story, remembering the darkest moments of despair, when he did not any longer dream of hope… he makes sure it is clear he had no special advantage, other than that Loki came for him; he could not have broken free on his own. He had tried, for weeks, to no avail. No one who was under that spell was trapped so because of lack of willpower.

A few have ventured further, questioned him on what occurred on those three days between his rescue and his return; each time he is asked to tell the tale he explains that Loki had brought him elsewhere, and there he had slowly recovered enough to return to help his friends. They ask for details, and he shrugs and tells them that it is all hazy. Loki tended his wounds, and he slept much, woke from nightmares, wept on a few occasions, and he and his brother had shared a few personal conversations before returning to the Tower as soon as he was able.

After that, most of his questioners grow awkward and begin to fidget with their pens, and he gives them a weak smile and apologizes for not being able to be more helpful.

So it is that a few days after, once things have settled down enough for him to slip away, he wanders across the city, retracing his steps.

He is almost surprised when he manages to find it.

Less so when he finds it empty.

And it is truly empty: not only is Loki not there, but all of his possessions are gone as well. Thor pokes through the other empty rooms before finding one that is familiar, but even there the bed on which Thor slept is absent, as are the chairs. There are no furnishings, nothing on the walls, nothing.

There is a fuzzy green bathrobe wadded up in a corner by the tub, forgotten, but that is the only thing left to say that the place was ever inhabited.

No, Thor is not surprised at all. Loki certainly would not allow him to know the location of his lair, even if he were only hiding from Thor as an enemy.

Still, for a few minutes he sits in the center of the bare floor, gazing absently out the window.

*

And Loki, this time, does not flee to Latveria.

He does not in fact go far at all; he is near enough still that he is aware of Thor’s visit to his old lair, aware of when he comes and when he leaves and just how long he waited, though surely Thor must have known that it would be in vain and that he was lingering in that abandoned place only for his own thin comfort.

Loki stays near, but he also stays silent. And of that, he is not sure why.

From what he has heard, he is now the only one who retains enough knowledge of the Purple Man’s power to replicate it. He could use it for his own ends. He cannot say he hasn’t thought of doing so. But after only a little consideration he had realized… he finds the idea exhausting. Oh, he will keep it in reserve, for he always likes to have a hidden trick or two—particularly one to which _he_ is immune—but…

He does not think he will use it again.

Somehow from there, his mind always turns back to his brother, to that wholly unexpected and inexplicable final kiss, Thor seizing him fervently, as if he meant not to release him again…

Loki had panicked, and the memory still makes him uneasy. He does not understand what could possibly have induced such a reaction in Thor, after everything that had happened.

It takes several more days of unsettled idling around until he realizes that Thor is not going to repeat his pointless visit to Loki’s abandoned lair any time soon and admits to himself that he had believed he would.

Thor has in fact made himself scarce; all of the Avengers had in their attempt to let themselves heal, but he most of all. And though Loki has no desire to speak to him or… confront him, or whatever it is Thor would like them to do, Loki has to see him again. So he goes, under his spell of concealment, and makes his way back to Thor’s bedroom in the Avengers Tower.

He goes late enough at night that the place hums under a song of peaceful dreams. Dim blue lights line the corridors and illuminate the atria; the city flickers and glows beyond the glass of the windows.  There are no footfalls to be heard, and only once after reaching the upper levels does he cross paths with another living soul—a muzzy-looking Bruce Banner padding barefoot through the halls, a cup of aromatic tea steeping in his hand (invisible or not, Loki avoids him).

Thor, however, is not asleep when Loki reaches his room.

The room itself is changed, and Loki is not surprised at that. Everything has been rearranged, redecorated; a few items Loki remembers seeing on Thor’s shelves have been removed. It is barely recognizable, which is surely the point.

Thor does not look like he has _been_ asleep, despite the hour, even though he is lying abed in loose pajamas with arms folded beneath his head and the gold of his hair splayed across the pillow. A window is open, letting in the cool night air that hints at rain, and through it Thor gazes, contemplative, his eyes clear. He looks as if he is merely enjoying his own private thoughts in the quiet, enjoying the feel of everything being well again.

Loki leans back against the wall, and he realizes that his heart is pounding.

He could do it. He could let the concealment fall. He could step from the shadows, stride forward to where Thor lies, and return that strange kiss to him before Thor has a chance to say a word or to do more than startle at Loki’s presence. He could pin Thor’s wrists to the mattress and see if he truly wanted Loki to love him; he could suck possessive marks into the tender skin of Thor’s throat and see how it was with no compulsion between them. He could find out—

Loki releases a deep, shaky breath.

He could do that. He could.

He won’t.

On the bed Thor shifts a little, curling onto his side but still gazing out at the dark and speeding clouds and the distant lights and the city, all these things reflected in the deep, starry blue of his eyes. Just as he is in his brother’s.

In the Avengers Tower, there is a god who does not belong there. Invisible, he leans against the wall for support, and he stares down at the other god before him.

He could; he knows that.

And he wonders, trembling, what might happen if he did.


End file.
